Yes and No.
If Germany + France started doing this, it will explode stuff none-the-less.
The disadvantages to this are huge - three sovereign states with altering strategies on currency will lead to complete chaos and confusion in the market.
The Trump Presidency : Part 2
- Thread starter The Boy
- Start date
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Ashwin @AR87 are here to discuss two "on-paper" not great results for United over the last week, but are there positive signs of progress despite what the ex-United pundits are saying?
They also preview the big game Europa League game against Lyon.
Yes and No.
If Germany + France started doing this, it will explode stuff none-the-less.
The disadvantages to this are huge - three sovereign states with altering strategies on currency will lead to complete chaos and confusion in the market.
brutal.
Days
Tesla buy all battery cathodes from CHI-NA
CHYNA!!
Yep, Musk needs China.
That is a great scene.I do not know what it is in the nineties, but for sure, it is neither the control, nor ownership.
I also do not think it is the volume. In fact, most of the volume, it is by hedge funds who do high frequency tradings.
And no, I do not agree that it is a shit situation. Most of the money in those companies is passively invested. On other words, they just buy proportionally to the companies size (e.g., if Apple is 3% of the US stock market, they allocate 3% to Apple). Most of the money in those companies also is not their money, but the money of investors (people like me, or pensions like 401k etc). In case of Vanguard, it is also owned by people who put money there.
Vanguard and its followers has been one of the best things of capitalism, allowing people who do not know much about stocks to invest in stocks with a very low barrier and very low fees. Without them, you are either investing in individual stocks (a fool's game for most) or in active indices (that cost a fortune and have a lower return in average).
I have seen this movie I am sure. Was it Sicario? I think the Ozarks did it as well. Probably where he got the idea.
Restricted to the 500 index. But that would be where the number comes from. I mean that's pretty enormous considering these are the largest American companies which exist.
You could argue that investing in stock is not a class-conscious thing to do or you could easily counter that it is. I've heard both arguments. More nuanced than my interpretation of them, too, so not great place to put them.
Yeah its loosely similar to Sicario.
The largest shareholder does not mean that they have a controlling stake. Usually, their ownership is somewhere between a 3-9%. For example, Vanguard is the main shareholder of Apple at 8.7%, of Microsoft at 9% Nvidia at 9%, second main shareholder of Amazon (after Bezos) at 7.7%, main of Alphabet at 7.25%, second of Meta at 8.7% etc.
Which in turn, that money invested in those funds is owned by literally million of people.
I get that, but it is a massive concentration. The millions and then the several thousands and everyone knows the difference between these two groups. One of them will pay, severely, no matter how the market crashes (see 2008 and more) and the other is so comfortable that it will never suffer (indeed, it made money to the tune of scores of trillions, this class, during that period of time).
I'm not against people investing in stocks. It's not my business. I'm just concerned at wealth concentration. And 90% of the 500 top US companies is massive -- controlling stake or not. They often have stakes like the percentages you've quoted but given the volume that's an awful lot of power. I've also heard what you say: Blackrock doesn't dictate terms. And then the vanguard argument of democratization of shareholding where you can invest with them and make money based on their performance.
It's nuanced. Not pretending otherwise. Just seems obscene to me and potentially a terrible scenario down the line.
1) Again, it is 90% of comapnies having the highest share, not being majority (let alone controlling) shareholder. If you get into S&P, Vanguard et al have to buy your stock, even if they do not like it, cause that it what passive investing is. The more people give money to them, the more shares they will hold on those companies, it is quite straightforward. If more people will do passive investing (which has been the trend), the bigger Vanguard/BlackRock/CS/Fidelity is going to become.
2) I think you are making the mistake of thinking only the rich people invest. Nowadays, almost everyone is investing. If you are putting money in a pension (401k or UK equivalents), you are investing, because that money is being invested into stocks and other securities. Almost surely with those 4 big companies I mentioned.
The US has always been this way. It might be/seem more today (I'd need stats) but it has always encouraged people to invest on the stock market. Its middle class has basically always done it. As to working class investments, bitcoin ,etc., did seem to move that needle forward. I read, a while back, book or journal, which had the statistics for the middle class investment in small (in terms of thousands and so on) investments by the American public compared with their European counterparts and the Americans were very much a stock-market investment culture whereas the Europeans had not gone beyond that same threshold.
I accept 1, I just do not like it and think it can be brought forward in greater nuance than my complaint or your answer (it has been by economists of varying sides for a long time).
I think (1) can easily be regulated (it probably is already massively regulated) to lower the influence of Vanguard et al. Effectively, remove their voting for the board, and make them only passive indices. Thus, they can only buy and sell following the market, but not affect the market.
That sounds good.
BlackRock and other major ETF managers gave proxy voting rights to ETF shareholders, so it's not BlackRock voting at a company's AGM, but the underlying investors each choosing how they want to vote. This was to actually democratise investing (a bit) and avoid the issues of the big passive managers having too much influence.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainabil...oting-choice-retail-etf-investors-2023-07-17/
Cheers. Will read.
Yeah, arguing that Vanguard controls the stock market is like saying the Post Office controls what people write in their Christmas cards.
(That said, the concentration in index funds can cause some some potentially weird economic distortions. Without wanting to get banned for gratuitous self-promotion, I made a podcast on the topic here.)
Nice
Of course. Shit companies, by virtue of being large and thus owned by passive indices, continue being large and avoid (for at time at least), their price going down.
That is why entering or leaving S&P500 is such a big deal. Not cause, you are a better/worse company by doing so, but because all indices that follow S&P500 will then buy/sell your stock.
Sicario 2
everybody was saying it couldn't be done
He’s just threatened China with additional 50% tariffs
Featuring Travis Wheatley as POTUS
In effect stopping trade from China. Basically empty the wall marts because 95% of the non food and gun stuff is made in China.
I said some weeks back that if Trump did crash the economy the big tech and others lining up behind him would rescind support and will try to stop him in some manner. But it really is looking like that I was wrong about the level of cowardice that has engulfed the American elite.
Yes, there is that Index Inclusion Effect.
There's also some academic research suggesting that broad, diversified stock ownership can harm consumers. The argument is that investors who own shares in multiple companies in the same industry cause those companies to compete less vigorously with each other. It makes intuitive sense—diversified investors want to maximise the profits of the industry rather any individual firm, and fierce competition is not in their interests if it hurts profit margins.
Research papers have found common ownership increased the price of airline tickets and medicines, and suppressed the interest rate offered to savers by retail banks. But it's a complex phenomenon without a clear mechanism for anti-competitive price setting... so it's far from a slam-dunk case. There are other arguments that passive investing weakens shareholder oversight, which boosts executive pay and reduces corporate investment. I'm not sure I really buy it despite what the academics say.
Anyway, this isn't the thread for a debate on the merits of index investing!
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Moments like this are the best example of conspiracy theories (Illuminati, Freemasons etc al) about strong shadow groups of interest controlling government turn out to be such nonsense.
We are walking towards a massive recession just because of the rumblings and acts of a lunatic. And no one is able to do anything against that.
With the whole Project 2025 thing it’s kinda proving that conspiracy theory no?
That was a good listen, thanks.
Trump appears to he hell bent on crashing the dollar to make US manufactured goods cheaper and foreign goods more expensive.
It also puts pressure on the Fed Reserve to lower interest rates (something Trump has already started banging on about)
It also puts pressure on the Fed Reserve to lower interest rates (something Trump has already started banging on about)
It is just a big scam. Warren Buffet was cashing out 300 billions in February. Musk brother cashing out his Tesla stock and I imagine many more cases. They are doing it again. Use any opportunity been caused by COVID or man made recessions to buy in the deep and they will be richer and us poorer
There is not enough guillotines
There is not enough guillotines
All those factories will be moved to American in an instant, and millions of Americans will go and work there, those beautiful jobs, you know those conveyor belt jobs putting stuff together, all will be available to Americans and it will be the best thing anyone has ever seen. Billions of Americans will enjoy very beautiful work that will arrive from Asia.
It only proves that there aren't such shadow organizations (Project 2025 was very open). And it shows how fragile the system is.
If there were those groups of people so strong to control governments, they would not allow to get this big recession just to please a moron with a God-complex.
I mean, he is quite good at it. I do not think he needed to have inside information to do what it did. Lots of people here were predicting the same.
Just that he is a) very brave at doing these moves, b) has been doing stock choosing for over 80 years (not a typo), c) is the best investor of all time. While also saying for quite a bit of time that the market was already overvalued.
So, of course, he predicted (and acted on it). Not emulating him while we had the chance is the problem
